Author: Christina Dalcher
Started: September 25, 2018
Finished: October 1, 2018
Pages: 326
Genre: Fiction
First Sentence: If anyone told me I could bring down the president, and the Pure Movement, and that incompetent little shit Morgan LeBrin in a week’s time, I wouldn’t believe them.
Summary: [From BN] On the day the government decrees that women are no longer allowed more than one hundred words per day, Dr. Jean McClellan is in denial. This can't happen here. Not in America. Not to her. Soon women are not permitted to hold jobs. Girls are not taught to read or write. Females no longer have a voice. Before, the average person spoke sixteen thousand words each day, but now women have only one hundred to make themselves heard. For herself, her daughter, and every woman silenced, Jean will reclaim her voice. This is just the beginning...not the end.
Thoughts: Do not, I repeat, do not read this book while a sexual assault hearing for a nominee to the Supreme Court is happening. Actually, it doesn't matter. This book is going to make you righteously angry no matter what current events are or are not happening.
Why will this book make you angry? Well, it is all to effing real. Every page left me simmering in fury because it feels like a future that could happen. I truly believe certain people would love to limit women's communication. We have the technology to enforce it through wearables on our wrists. We can easily slip down the slope that leads to the enshrinement of toxic masculinity. This book works, especially right now, because it feels like a near future occurrence. The world Dalcher created is horrifying and all to possible.
The text is straightforward and spare. This is not a book with flowery prose of lyrically crafted paragraphs. It lays out a scene in basic, unflourished language. You don't need many adjectives to set a scene when a simple description strikes fear in to the reader. The text is stark and raw and every page made me angry and left me shuttering for what could be.
The story is also well layed out and plotted. Our main character has to decide who to trust, who to believe, and who is acting in what interests. She even has to consider the drives of her own son. It's utterly devastating how the older son in this book acts and responds to the stimuli and influence around him. It's a subplot to the book, but it makes the story all that scarier.
My main quibble with the book is that it resolves too quickly. Things are plowing along and it feels like there should be a hundred or so more pages but, nope, it's done and that's that. The resolution comes far too quickly for a world that has utterly changed.
Rating: 8/10 [Terrific]
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